The World Cup of Pokémon 2017 - Round 1

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WhiteQueen

the queen bee
is a Tiering Contributorwon the 11th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Past SPL Champion
I have only played SM these past two weeks and I already concluded that Dugtrio is broken. It's so easy to splash onto all type of teams and eliminate what it sets out to do. Once Dug accomplishes its job, it's not deadweight either. It can then set up SR or use Memento to give the user momentum.

Sableye is a pest as it has always been. But with the introducing of ridiculous Tapus and their terrains, especially Fini, Sableye is nowhere near metagame defining as it once was in ORAS. Clefable's mega evolution, Magearna, is everywhere too, making Sableye a mere set up fodder.

Ban Dugtrio. Leave Sableye alone because black lives matter.
 
Lost to craing. For the record I had knock off superpower thundurus, smack down eq earth plate lando, and 3 atks mega gyara (taunt is better vs stall but terrible vs anything else imo as ur walled by too much) and didn't make any obvious misplays if any. Idk if I'm just bad at building or what, but I think its dumb that the only way for me to beat stall is if I concentrate 100% only on the stall matchup and neglect every other playstyle since obviously my wanting to be decent against other playstyles cost me in this game. Also take a look at craing's record in sm and even oras tours such ost and smogon tour - he stalls almost every game, his opponents know it and prep for it, but they still lose. I think the team I brought beats most stall but he happened to bring one with fast zapdos and he also played well with chansey, and thats the problem imo. There's too many variants which need specific things to beat it. I swear I'm not salty I'm just trying to give my thoughts on the metagame atm, stall is a problem. Don't want to take away from craing tho, he's excellent at building and playing with stall, props to him.

Sry to team UK for only going 1-2, probably could have won vs reiku but I got a bit overexcited and played too aggressive early on and not much I could do vs craing.
 
I know I'm not in wcop (although some of my teams have been used) but I really wanted to give my thoughts about what 1 True Lycan said, so hopefully it's OK for me to post here.

I would like to first of all say that I do think stall is possibly an issue that needs to be looked at; I'm not fully convinced however, and like ABR said there's a lot of faulty reasoning going around and I don't think this battle is a good example of stall being "broken."

If I'm understanding 1 True Lycan correctly he's upset because he brought Superpower Thund + Smack Down Lando + Mega Gyara and still lost to stall, and feels like there's no way to properly cover all stall variations without building a full stall cteam. I think that's a good point in general, but isn't proved at all by this battle because frankly I'm not a big fan of the team he brought.

First of all, Superpower Thund w/o Taunt is not a good Chansey lure. At all. As you can see in that battle it loses to Chansey 1v1. Thund in general is a meh mon. Taunt Thund is an alright balance breaker but it kills itself too fast for my liking and lacks the defensive utility of Sub Magma Tran for example (a better balance breaker that also puts in work vs. stall.) Superpower Thund w/o Taunt on the other hand is just a bad set, to be frank.

It will lose to Chansey 1v1 and therefore can barely be considered a lure at all, and it puts in much less work vs. balance without Taunt as well. To work at all this set relies completely on surprise factor -- you need to catch the Chansey on the switch -- and 1 True Lycan didn't even try to do that. He revealed Superpower when Chansey was already in at 100% health and was able to Softboiled up and play around it from that point onward.

However, even if he did wait for a more optimal turn to reveal Superpower too many things could have gone wrong. If you want to lure Chansey there are many better options.

Secondly of all, lets discuss the other two mons he mentioned that he expected to put in work vs. stall. Mega Gyarados is a bad mon in general. I commented to NJNP that I wouldn't use it even on a complete stall cteam. Even vs. stall there's a lot of obstacles to it sweeping; Clefable, Counter Skarm, Tangrowth, and Toxapex all present significant obstacles to it sweeping. It requires significant support to sweep even vs. stall, and I don't think this team provides it at all. Yes Smack Down Lando annoys certain stall builds with Skarm, but it doesn't reliably get damage on Skarm. Once you reveal Smack Down Skarm is not going to be staying in to take the hit. There are also a lot of stall variants that won't be bothered by Smack Down Lando at all (Fast Zapdos + Suicune did a pretty good job of shutting it down in this case) meaning that for the most part Gyarados is unsupported.

This brings me to my final point. This team's stallbreakers lack synergy. Thund is a suboptimal Chansey lure, but even if it lured Chansey reliably what does that support on the team? Latios? Most stall builds have a Clefable which is going to wall that anyways. Smack Down Lando will get up rocks and annoy certain stall builds, but it's not reliable in that regard and doesn't consistently support Mega Gyarados. Like I mentioned Mega Gyarados is not very good and it requires a lot of support that these other two stallbreakers aren't providing.

tl;dr stall might be an issue, but I don't think this battle is a good example of it being "broken" because I think this is a poorly built team. Yes it had three stallbreakers, but they're not the best and they do nothing to support each other. Stall can be beaten reliably with less than three slots dedicated to stallbreaking if the team works as a cohesive whole.
 

WhiteQueen

the queen bee
is a Tiering Contributorwon the 11th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Past SPL Champion
Question: why do you need to lure Chansey when you can simply slap a Dugtrio on your team to end her? Dugtrio can faint at least one Pokémon on any stall team almost without fail. Why need a lure when you can get a kill reliably by using Dugtrio?
 

Jirachee

phoenix reborn
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